The Adventures of Skippy & PJ: Chapter 1

Many of you may be wondering: “why what is a game starting with ‘the adventures of’ doing on a badass site like eGamer?” Well, it’s not. This is the start of our very own comedy series. It’ll be hitting you every Wednesday evening, provided I can bring myself out of the usual stupor caused by long weeks and short nights. Now why a comedy series, I know that guy who’ll log onto the site tomorrow before he goes out and works at Pick ‘n Pay is gonna want to know. well, Wednesday marks the middle of the week, when we’re just about to start contemplating suicide so we here at eGamer are here to save you.

Before we get onto the meat and chicken-bones of the story, lets just introduce you to some of the things you’ll need to know. Also, here at eGamer we don’t ask much of you adoring fans other than that you adore us, read our articles and comment on the the QOTD. This time around however we’re changing things. ‘The Adventures of Skippy and PJ’ is a rather new concept to all of us and as such we would like you to give some feedback with regard to the humour, qualilty and general goodness of the series, you can post a comment or e-mail me if you have a lot to say or rant about. Your favourite website thanks you.

At the tender age of 11, his parents were violently murdered by the Nantendo Clan of ninjas, who wield only chicken-wing-chucks* and deadly chicken bones. From that moment onward, he dedicated his life to mastering the art of gaming so that he could one day become a gaming warrior and seek revenge upon the sadistic Nantendo’s. How this would prepare him for his ultimate showdown is anybody’s guess but then again, he was only ten at the time.

He realised a year later that his particular plan for revenge was rather poorly thought out but decided that he was already too far in to quit and so ran with it. As PJ grew older so did his knowledge of gaming and theoretical skill, however he sucked at it. He could not hit you with a tactical nuke in MW2. He was, to say the least, the world’s biggest Noob. Over the years he developed rather disturbing and most probably humorous phbias as well as OCD and the tendency to spaz** out. He did however have a secret weapon, whenever he took part in tournaments (this happened only because people like to make fun of the weird Asian guy) he would get killed so many times, he even found a way to die in Gran Turismo, that he would explode in one of his aforementioned spasmodic fits. This would cause everybody else to run for cover and he would therefore win by default. To this day PJ still seeks to become a gaming master inorder to exact his revenge. He’s gonna have to wait a loooooooooooong time.

These are his stories.

(cue intense CSI/inspiring rock-type music)

*Like nun-chucks but made of hardened chicken wings.

**To freak out in a violent and self-harming manner, with random muscular twitching; much to the laughter of surrounding people.

Chapter 1: Duplicity

It was February, the week of Valentine’s Day in fact and PJ was strolling through the park hand-in-hand with someone very close to him, unfortunately said person’s closeness extended no further than the fact that they were touching hands, for by some misfire of Cupid’s arrow, PJ had begun to hold the hand of a partially blind racist woman who could see nothing of him save for his slanted eyes. This was the source of many racist comments which she hurled adoringly at PJ. Eventually, PJ realised what was going on and was about to release himself from the witches grasp when suddenly… his spaz senses began to tingle, although his phone was also vibrating but then that’s just a coincidence. His phone special senses told him that Bioshock 2 had arrived in stores. Fast as someone who believes he has super powers, PJ was outside a local establishment ready to purchase the game. He entered, confident of getting his hands on a copy of this much sought after title. He emerged in front of the counter and muttered: “I would like a copy of Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams, please sir.”

“Oh, no dude it’s just Bioshock 2 now, they dropped the ‘Sea of Dreams’ bit,” came the reply.

“Noh, it said that I must get Bioshock 2: SEA OF DREAMS.”

“Look man, it’s the same game, man.”

This went on for quite some time until the shop manager was called in to sort out PJ’s problem and so PJ left the store with Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams in hand. He stared at the boxart, simply genius. In holographic lettering it said: Bioshock 2 and underneath it, almost as if it were handwritten: Sea of Dreams on what seemed to be a bit of masking tape but was no doubt an ingenious bit of Photoshopped artwork.

Once home, PJ fired up his PC with the kickstart and installed Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams. Then, without warning one of PJ’s most prominent fears, melanophobia (fear of black (not black people)), reared its ugly head when he noticed that the game screen had been cropped and was not making full use of his homemade dual-display widescreen. There was just so much black along those edges, at least a centimetre’s worth. The horror!

Eventually a rather elegant solution presented itself in that PJ just chopped off the unused parts of the screen, problem solved. Now PJ could get down to business. Immediately he was flummoxed by how insanely difficult the game was (for him), that final boss fight in Akham Asylum was a walk in the park compared to this but nonetheless he persevered. After some time though the elegantly hacked off bits of screen began to affect the rest of the screen, at first it was barely noticeable but after a while PJ saw that the left side of things was a centimetre or so above the right side, the obvious conclusion was that his right eye was set too low and thus creating this strange imbalance. He therefore called his therapist (don’t act surprised) and booked an appointment to determine whether he in fact needed his eye repositioned, strangely it had never bothered him until now.

Anyway while this had all been going on, PJ had forgotten to put the game on pause and as such was rewarded with the face of a healthy Splicer gnawing at his Big Daddy’s head (this may or may not be hint as to how his real father died). Soon after, the screen went black signalling the Big daddy’s death and due to the glitchy nature of PJ’s rig, it stayed there for a while instead of reloading the level. The darkness crept in on PJ, he was trapped, unless he went into the other room but no, he was definitely trapped with no way out. The darkness enveloped him much like it may have should he have been an inmate somewhere. He fought it but he was of course only a humbly stupid noob.

PJ woke up to the smell of pancakes only to discover that his PC had exploded right next to him. He felt perfectly fine however, in fact he felt… PJ woke up again, for longer this time. He went about his daily business but noticed that he kept passing out while doing rather simple tasks such as signing a cheque or sitting. His Wndows PC had also shut down during simple tasks. What was happening to him, was it puberty all over again? Is PJ Homosexual? Is PJ of a definitive sex? Will PJ ever play Bioshock 2 and realise that the Sea of Dreams part was dropped from the name? Would this all sound cooler with a narrative voice saying it?